


you wouldn't want it if you knew what it was

by jokeperalta



Category: Jamestown (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Longing, Pining, Unresolved Sexual Tension, and its equally worrying and disappointing that this will be the first fic for this pairing on ao3, anyway i took s1 scenes and made 'em modern you're welcome, come on guys, emotional cheating, i'm only up to ep4 so i dont know what happens, just a tad, wat are u doing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-03-07 11:51:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18872656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jokeperalta/pseuds/jokeperalta
Summary: If he doesn't resist, he's lost.





	you wouldn't want it if you knew what it was

**Author's Note:**

> quick disclaimer: at time of publishing I have only watched up to the end of series 1, episode 4 (yo don’t spoil me!) so I have literally no idea what happens to them beyond then but if i didn’t post this it would have driven me insane and it’s the first inspiration i’ve had for literally anything in months...so here we are
> 
> i really just wanted to mash some of my fav scenes (so far) together and make ‘em modern AU so... i did.
> 
> title from moderation by florence and the machine

If he doesn’t resist, he’s lost.

The night club, atypically opulent though it is, is too warm by half which doesn’t distinguish it much for him from the dive clubs he spent most weekends of a very long medical degree in. Pulsing music and the writhing mess of human bodies feels constructing on his lungs. He’s alone in the booth nursing a now-warm beer: Silas, James, Alice, Verity and the others having scattered to the bar or the dance floor, to properly celebrate the auspicious occasion.

Jocelyn and Sam are getting married in a week’s time.

 He’s at pains to show that he’s happy for one of his very closest friends - because he  _is_  and because he knows Sam is practically overflowing with delight at the result of his whirlwind romance that began only six months prior on a work trip to Oxford. Just to look at him it’s impossible to deny the man is besotted.

 It’s only that—

 Well.

The first time he met Jocelyn -after she and Sam were already engaged - rather set the tone for how he views all of this.

 

 

-

  

 

Sam had told him his new fiancée was feeling under the weather one day— with dizzy spells and on-and-off feverishness. They’d only been engaged about a week, then, and Christopher was still privately reeling from his usually level-headed best mate proposing to a woman after only knowing her two months.

Jocelyn had insisted she wasn’t ill enough to make an appointment at her own GP surgery, Sam had told him on the phone— but Sam was still worried. She seemed open to the idea of speaking to a doctor who was a friend of Sam’s when Sam had suggested it, so would Christopher mind coming over to speak to her.

He didn’t, of course. He wanted to meet the woman who had captured Sam so fully.

So he dutifully went.

Sam thanked him profusely and showed him into his minimalist central London apartment -which Jocelyn was pretty much already moved into, apparently - and into the bedroom.

“I’ll make us coffee,” Sam says obligingly, then points to the young woman sitting in a large leather armchair by the window. “And an orange juice for you, you need the vitamin C.”

“Thank you, darling. What would I do without you?” she says, and her voice is light and melodic.

Christopher thinks he hears a beat of sarcasm in it, but Sam preens ever so slightly under the praise so maybe he’d just imagined it.

Jocelyn turns her eyes to him once Sam leaves. She certainly doesn’t appear ill in the slightest- her eyes are sharp and alert (and oddly, he feels she’s assessing him for something.)

She leans forward. “I’m Jocelyn. I’ve heard good things about you.”

Christopher takes her proffered hand, shakes it lightly. She looks a lot younger than she probably actually is, he notes.

“Christopher. And likewise.” Sam had been talking his ear off about the beautiful Oxfordshire PR executive pretty much every time they spoke of late. “Sam says you haven’t been feeling—“

“Sam’s asked you to be best man at our wedding,” she interrupts.

The non-sequitur puts him on the back foot in his thoughts for a second.

“Yeah, I’m honoured.” Christopher smiles “I’m very happy for you both. How long have you been feeling ill?”

She ignores him. “Sam’s told me that you’ve been great friends since he moved to London, so in that spirit... I was hoping I could ask you a favour on Sam’s behalf.”

“Right,” Christopher says slowly. 

It feels oddly like he might have just walked into a set up.

“You already know that Sam’s been working for the Cabinet minister George Yeardley for the past year and they’ve become very close - they play badminton together on the weekends, and Sam is basically his right hand man.”

“I’m aware.”

“Well, we were talking the other night about our wedding and Sam mentioned that if he hadn’t felt he had to ask you... he might have asked George to serve as his best man.”

“Did he really?” It’s barely a question.

Her eyes go wide as saucers. He wonders what effect she wants this to have on him, and if she knows it’s not working. “Not that...- I didn’t mean he only asked you out of obligation, of course.”

“Oh, of course,” Christopher says. 

“So I’d hoped,” she continues. “That you might talk to him and let him know you wouldn’t mind... perhaps  _not_  being best man.”

“Ah.”

“And I’m only saying this to you because you know Sam- he’s far too nice to ever say something himself.”

“Or to even think it.” Jocelyn looks at him in innocent question. If he’s read this all wrong, he’s going to look like a right dick but he’s prepared to take the chance. “Because I’ve got the strangest feeling that this conversation you’re referring to didn’t actually happen.”

Jocelyn’s face twists just slightly. He can almost hear the cogs turning in her mind and he can’t help but be impressed, despite himself, of how easily she thinks she can manipulate people.

“Newly senior aides like Sam live and die by their minister’s favour and if he’s going to progress at all in Westminster, Yeardley needs to believe Sam’s devoted to him — enough to make him best man at his wedding.”

“So you want Sam to be top dog, fine, but then what do you get? To be a powerful man’s wife?”

“No, I want to be the woman who  _made_  him.”

Christopher leans back on his heels, digesting, watching her angel’s face calculating and scheming. He wonders suddenly, which came first: the relationship with Sam or the plan to be the woman behind his curtain, cultivating his rising star stock in Westminster.

“That damn coffee machine!” Sam bursts back into the room, making them both jump a foot into the air and breaking the intensity of the air between them. “I swear it only drips coffee now, we really need to replace it.”

Jocelyn smiles sweetly again, and it’s like seeing an entirely different woman sitting in front of him. She accepts the glass from her husband-to-be’s hands, taking a sip but staring at Christopher the whole time.

“So what’s the verdict, Doc?” Sam says like the good-natured and naive man he is. He wonders if Sam has any idea, even on a sub-conscious level, who he’s asked to marry him.

He’s almost forgotten the actual reason he came over by now but he gets a hold of himself and smiles tightly at Sam. “It’s nothing that can’t be cured with rest and Vitamin C.”

“See, Sam?” she says. “You worry too much.”

  

 

-

 

 

He doesn’t know how to explain it. 

This thing between them, that he feels acutely whenever they speak or whenever she’s near even if she doesn’t. 

It’s like—

Jocelyn seems to vibrate at a different frequency to everyone else, and it’s maddening that it seems like only he can feel it.

He tells himself that’s what it is. That he can’t understand how Sam can’t see her the way he does— the way she so obviously really is, underneath the sweetness and light act she performs for Sam’s benefit.

He looks out into the dance floor, running his thumb around the rim of his beer bottle. She catches his attention immediately -she’s hard to miss anyway, but for someone who is hyper aware of everything she does she’s completely impossible to ignore.

Sam is nearby, but she dances as though she’s alone. The strobe lights dance and colour her white-blonde hair as she moves in and out of their beams.

He watches Sam say something in her ear and point at the bar, Jocelyn nods absently and he leaves her to join James by the bar. She dances on as though he’d never been there at all, eyes closed and singing along. He’s barely even cognisant of the fact he’s still watching her when she abruptly stops dancing and glances over at him. He thinks he sees her smirk, just slightly, the corners of her open mouth twisting up imperceptibly.

She stares back without apology. When she looks at him he feels like a rubber band stretched to its limits. He’s not sure what’ll happen when he snaps back.

Jocelyn cocks her head and lifts one finger, beckoning him - to dance with her, to be closer, to do her bidding, whatever. 

He shakes his head minutely, not sure if he’s responding to her or to himself for wanting to.

Jocelyn just waits for him, like she knows exactly what he’s going to do before he even gets to the process of thinking about it. And she does, it seems.

Damn her.

He leaves his bottle on the table and gets up, feeling half-hypnotised. The darkness makes it worse, somehow. Sets a fire in his blood, makes it feel like they’re sharing a secret without even speaking.

A glass smashes at a table behind him as he walks, and a raucous hen party laughs at their drunken carelessness. The room rushes back in and he realises, quite intensely, where he is and what the hell he’s doing.

She’s marrying his best friend.

It’s about time he remembered that. Jocelyn looks disappointed but not surprised when he glances back at her, he takes a sideways step and walks away. He can’t look back, he can’t.

If he doesn’t resist, he’s lost.

**Author's Note:**

> lol i hope this makes sense!!
> 
> EDIT: i watched up end of s1 and spoiled myself for s2. all i can say is... massive buffoonery. christopher x jocelyn forever.


End file.
